what does your heaven look like?
I’m intrigued by the prospect of an afterlife. I’m not incredibly concerned with its location but I am interested to know what believers imagine it will be like.
- If you’re surrounded by your family and loved ones and everyone else is surrounded by their family and loved ones, what happens to divorced couples, or even in-laws? Is it just close family or is it extended family? Will my sister be with me or with her husband’s family? Will my children be with me or their own children, or will they be with their in-laws?
- If you don’t like someone in your family will they be with you for eternity too?
- If your father or mother don’t believe in the same god as you, or if one of your kids is an apostate, will you be able to visit them being tormented for eternity, or will you forget about them, or will it just be alright that they are in a state of torment for eternity?
- If Muslims are reclining on couches being served by virgins in heaven, are the virgins doing the serving not Muslims? Are women servants in the Muslim heaven or only if they’re virgins?
- What’s the point of having a test time on Earth with all its various difficulties and suffering if we could all be happy in heaven in the first place? If you had a pet dog that seriously offended you, would you punish its puppies on an ongoing basis from behind a screen, and then choose a minority to have a nice life while tormenting the rest? Would that not be cruelty to creatures with lesser understanding?
Eternal life is way too overrated. After a few googleplex years things have got to get boring.
And if heaven really is completely blissful then where’s the free will? (Isn’t the beauty of free will the argument for why things are so shitty here on earth in the first place?)
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I’m with you on this Howie. If there is eternal life, you would want it to be a lot better than this one.
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I agree, I can’t quite imagine how to fill eternity. And how can everyone experience bliss without mass character transplants to make us all like the same things? I mean, for a start, how would the god God determine the ideal temperature for heaven? Anything less than 30 degrees and I’m not happy …
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Perhaps you might find the climate in hell more pleasant?
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Welcome back…
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Thanks! I hope I am back, it’s so difficult to find the time …
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We missed you!! 🙂
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Saw something the other which made me laugh. It went something like:
So, who’ll be in heaven?
People like me
And who’ll be in hell?
People like you
You have to work on your pitch.
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Hmm. We must have faith in the assurance that it will somehow be ‘pleasant’ (though how one might draw that analogy, I don’t know) yet know that it will make our current existence irrelevant, along with the standards of judgement by which we currently evaluate our existence (excepting, of course, scriptural mandates). At least it solves the theodicy problem.
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Hi Keith,
No it doesn’t. Well, mores the point, if it does then it just raises another problem. Evil is explained in “this” world because of free will. If there is no evil in “heaven” then we must assume there is no free will in heaven.
And around and around we go…. 🙂
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“You have to work on your pitch.” Oh, I really like that! I’ll have to try and remember it. Quite sure it could come in handy. Got your book by the way. Why’s it not signed with a personal and touching dedication? 😉 Hoping to read it by the end of the year, if weaning goes successfully …
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You got the hard copy? Does it look good? Mine hasn’t arrived yet 😦 Actually, I changed the cover design just this morning.
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Yeah it’s great! Love the ominous blackness of it. I can’t put pictures in comments, but I’ve just taken a pic of it and put it at the bottom of the post.
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Ooooh, nice! It does look good in black. Shit, maybe I should have kept that for cover design?
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What have you changed it to?
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Smarty pants! How come a dinosaur like you can put pictures in comments and I can’t!!!!
Apart from that, I love the new cover. I feel cheated now. 😡
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Ha! I don’t know how to. Victoria does, and I asked her this morning to do something with the image file I had so I could put it up on my blog. It requires a URL, and she sent me back the link 🙂
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Do you prefer it?
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Difficult to say without seeing it in real life. The picture does look excellent, the perfect accompaniment. But I like the drama of the black, I like sinister.
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John, I actually like the dark and somber one. Think the other looks a bit busy. But each to our own. Or as Ark would say, each to his own 😉
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I agree, but it looks terrible on the Amazon product page. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
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Looks great on Violet’s photo though. Serious, and, er, biblical? 😉
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I know. Strangely biblical. I haven’t even seen it yet. Was going to hold out on any changes in the print version till I saw it, but thought having two covers on the product page would look ridiculous.
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Arch does it all the time. Only cos Victoria told him how to do it. I can’t remember. Something about find the pic and click on the IRL of the pic and and.
Ya needs Victoria 🙂
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Oh look, I did it! I’m not such a dinosaur after all, phew.
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Nice one. Can’t say I’ve ever done it.
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It may have just been a set-up for the rest of your post but assuming you are genuinely “interested to know what believers imagine it will be like,” I have a response (if not an ‘answer’) for your collection:
Your question is like asking an acorn what it imagines being an oak tree will be like… or asking homo heidelbergensis what it imagines homo sapiens sapiens will be like.
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Thank you for stopping by to give a Christian response, it’s much appreciated. This was certainly how I viewed it when I was a believer. But if this idyllic afterlife existed there would be pertinent issues about preference and free will, individual characteristics and the essence of our sense of self. Using the Supernatural Trump Card is understandable, but it’s a bit of a cop out. Besides that, most Christians make reference to the time they will spend with their families in heaven, in a manner that’s quite pedestrian. It’s the wishful thinking afterlife – like here, but perfect.
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What does my heaven look like?
“To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one’s head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no tomorrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace.”
― Oscar Wilde
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Ooh, very nice. I was imagining lying in some peaceful glade till I realised it meant surrounded by mud in the dark. 😉 I hope bits of my body grow into trees, get eaten by birds and go somewhere hot. Perhaps most of my atoms will find a long term home in a tropical rainforest. Perhaps most have already. I read somewhere that they don’t stay with us for long.
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An even better question is whether or not people believe their family watches them from their chosen preferred afterlife. Imagine all the generations of family looking down on you as you’re straining on the toilet or partaking in pleasures of the flesh. Are they cheering you on? Are they frightened?
Good to see you post again, Violet.
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In the Letter to the Hebrews we are advised to be careful of our behaviour because the angles watch us.
So many people had told me that my deceased mother would have been proud of me, after I was ordained a Christian Minister last year. If there is a heaven and she is up there, what must she think of me now as my faith has crumbled and I have withdrawn from ministry?
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Hi Peter, I was thinking about Violet’s questions this morning upon awakening and what Sirius wrote. My thought was — which interpretation? So, did you believe that when you die you go straight to heaven, hang out with the angels and take a peek on us heathens from time to time? There are other interpretations that you sleep until the final trumpet, then those who are alive and dead in Christ will rise, and all sorrow (memory of those who didn’t make it) will be erased from memory.
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The teaching on heaven is not particularly clear in the Bible. I tended to hold the view that after death one went straight to heaven, but that was probably more an emotional/sentimental view than any sort of view derived from the Bible.
I suppose the verse in the Bible that touched my heart more than any other was in Luke’s gospel where the Jesus said to the penitent thief, ‘I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise’
I suspect me view of heaven was based on contemplating that verse more than any other.
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“I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise”
Except that Jesus didn’t go to paradise that day according to the Bible. Oh well — more contradictions. So what’s new. 😉 Thanks for sharing.
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I take my interpretation of that verse from Janet Scott, a Quaker, who said that the “Paradise” is an acceptance of things as they are: being in touch with reality. The Kingdom of Heaven is here.
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I like that. 🙂
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Well exactly! I love the one where they get to start their own planet with their family, for ETERNITY. But the one where your corpse somehow reanimates is charming too. Or if it’s just in heaven, what personality do you have? The one when you were 3,15, 30 or 90. When are we ‘truly’ ourselves? If your mother was malnourished when she was pregnant and your brain didn’t develop as fully as it would have if she’d eaten loads of salmon, does the god God make the necessary adjustments when you get to heaven? Then why were you ‘tested’ here on Earth as a different being? I think the Christians haven’t really thought it all through …
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Oh yes indeed. I forgot about that one. Surely there would be something better to do in heaven and passively watch the dull details of other people’s lives. But people somehow find the notion comforting.
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Good to see you again.
Those questions are too complex for my simple mind.
I would like to know how one lives after death. What type of living is it?
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Sitting with popcorn watching the living go about their business? Or just steaming in beams of the perfect god God’s love in some kind of druggy coma?
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the good book says it is harder for a rich man to get into heaven…, all the descriptions of heaven are places of opulence with nothing to do. Isn’t this just a consolation for poor people that if only they continue to believe these impossible to believe stories, they will be very wealthy in a future life?
Will they be driving Ferraris? Is their a car manufacturer? Or is it just a land of milk and honey? How does one feel after eating milk and honey for a three days in a row? Have they thought about the meal conditions in heaven?
Have they imagined being without work? What do they plan on doing for eternity?
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That’s why everyone’s vision of heaven is different. Religious people with close families need to believe they will be together in an afterlife. Religious people with less loving families tend to imagine something else. It would be good to get a selection of Christians in a room to argue about how they imagine it.
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We ask them to give us an agreed description of heaven
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Okay, I’ll ask and see if any pop by to comment.
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The most clever demagogue and populist politicians tell people lies, that are obscure enough for people to project their own fantasies upon them.
Heaven is not really described by anyone visiting there, because nobody has. Ever. Not even according to the actual stories we have of it. There have been people who have had these hashis induced dreams about it with all sorts of rathrer unhealthy sounding imagery of beasts with numerous eyes and a lot of praising going on and then we have the individuals who claim to have on the brink of death and as their fantasies derived from oxygen depravation to the physical brain are somewhat similar, feel justified in making claims of having been over the border.
Heaven is a clever lie upon wich people in their fear of death can project what ever they feel they would rather in their afterlife to happen, whom they would rather meet and stuff… But it is scary how this rather infantile mechanism to cope with the natural fear of death is being used by all sorts of evil men with ambitions of power and leadership.
What would I have in my preferred afterlife? Some “riding in green fields” and Motörhead playing in the backround… Family, friends and no selfcentered pricks. But if a person grows weary of such existance in the eternity after billions and trillions of years is there a chance to kill oneself?
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“people in their fear of death can project what ever they feel they would rather in their afterlife to happen” Precisely. And conveniently they ignore the afterlife desires of other people and pretend it’s all the same ‘heaven’.
“Some “riding in green fields” and Motörhead playing in the backround” Yes, I would certainly want to kill myself after about a week! 🙂
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Indeed, and because you would not like it in my heaven, my afterlife would be less than a heaven as you would not be there. 😉
Actually, I have never really dreamt a heaven for myself. I have no idea what it would be like. It is a titilating mind game, but it achieves nothing as there is no way of knowing anything about it. There are not very accurate descriptions of it even in mythology. And how could there be? Nobody has even alledgedly been there and come back. Hashis induced dreams of many eyed monsters or NDEs hardly count, because anyone can have strange dreams and NDEs are totally dependant on the cultural heritage of the person during the alledged experiences.
Could I have fairies and dragons in my heaven, please? I must say I find Valhalla much more compelling suggestion for an afterlife, than the description of heaven in the Bible. But I am a nonbeliever and have been told my most likely afterlife disposition is the library of hell, where there are just shortened versions of classic books by the Readers Digest. Eternity of that seems quite fitting punishment for my wrogdoings, exept that I do not see the point of punishment if there is not even a chance that it would teach the wrongdoer to behave better when back among others.
I certainly hope my heaven is not going to be the Jehovas Wittnesses version as depicted in their pamphlets as some sort of very, very white American holiday resort. I guess one could cope that for a few days, but then the constant taste of puke would make me want to end it all…
How do people percieve this heaven thing, that they so much yearn for? So much so, that they are ready to sell their very humanity in accepting that some other people of different cultural heritage are bound in an eternal torment, but they themselves are saved by worshipping a god that claims to be justified in sending people into eternal torment for disbelief in the particular cultural suggestion of a god.
Is there going to be stakes in them heavens? How could that be, if lion and lamb are friends and there is no death? Are all people in them heavens going to live as vegetarian communists, or is there going to be competition, enterprizes and corporations in them streets of gold? What about the corporations exploiting their workers? Do we only have to give up on stakes, or do we also have to give up sex? It seems to me an awfull long and agonizing version of eternity without sex. But then is the sex going to be just for recreational purposes, as that is for some reason often severely condemned by the religious. If there will be sex only for procreational purposes and there is no death, that means that sooner or later as the population there grows exponentially, the people who did experience life in this material universe, are going to become a ridiculously minute minority. What will be their purpose in that society?
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Yeah, if I had to imagine one … what would I want? There could be no eating because animals would inevitably suffer even at the hands of just each other. And animals would have to be there or it would be rubbish. Just floating happy on a cloud?
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The JW’s have a bit of a problem because they see only 144,000 people in heaven, based on the teaching in Revelation. To deal with that they had to devise a sort of B Grade heaven for the rest, once their numbers exceeded 144,000 and all the good seats had been taken!
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There has been some study of NDE’s. What the researchers found was that the experience seemed to accord somewhat to the persons pre-conceived ideas. Especially when people claim to have met spiritual beings or deities. This suggests it is internally generated, a bit like a dream.
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I put pictures in comments by uploading them to a draft post, turning to Text and copying the line of code containing the picture into the comment. Though this only works on my own blog.
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Thanks! I’ll give that a go if I need to again. You well?
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Healing, coming out of my shell into greater acceptance and delight, possibly even loving- I had a third date, though organising those dates took a great deal of time. See my blog!
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Sounds good! I’ll try and catch up with everything in the coming weeks.
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When I was a Christian, there was a very popular Christian song — won several awards, including the Dove award. It’s from the perspective of a believer, but his is certainly not unique.
“I Can Only Imagine”
I can only imagine what it will be like
When I walk by your side
I can only imagine what my eyes will see
When your face is before me
I can only imagine
Yeah
Surrounded by your glory
What will my heart feel
Will I dance for your Jesus
Or in awe of you be still
Will I stand in your presence
Or to my knees will I fall
Will I sing hallelujah
Will I be able to speak at all
I can only imagine
I can only imagine
I can only imagine when that day comes
And I find myself standing in the Son
I can only imagine when all I will do
Is forever, forever worship you
I can only imagine, yeah
I can only imagine
Yeah
I can only imagine
When all I will do
Is forever, forever worship you
I can only imagine
——————————
Doesn’t that sound fun? Forever is a long time.
— https://youtu.be/BRPGRdbGHSs —
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I can only imagine just how much cringing I can take before I implode. I only managed 10 seconds of the video. The lyrics are lovely though, fervent adoration of creatures of our imagination is a beautiful thing! I used to feel like that about River Phoenix. And he existed, so that proves the god God does.
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It’s kinda creepy now when I look at it through non-Christian eyes. What parent in their right mind would want that kind of adoration, and especially after you’re told by said parent that without them you are nothing but filthy rages.
The video is interesting when you watch it in it’s entirety, because it’s a good example of terror management theory.
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I am not espousing a particular view of the afterlife, Muslim, Christian or otherwise, but I think your interpretations are a bit too literal and based on 3 or 4 dimensional reality. Eternity isn’t forever, it is a place of no time (for instance). I enjoyed your hypothetical questions nonetheless.
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Hi fahrusha, may I ask what you mean by “Eternity isn’t forever, it is a place of no time.”
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